Cycle of Abandonment
by JayEyedWolf
Summary: A torn and overall defeated Taniyama Mai can't seem to shake off the bitter pain a certain someone's words and departure left. Feeling alone and helpless and cut off and isolated from the 'family' she had cultivated while working for that someone, she struggles to get through each day. Beside her, her family struggles to catch her as she falls. Can they help her break the cycle?


**AN: Because I don't know how to add an official author's note *facepalm***

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* * *

Mai stood, staring into the mirror without really seeing her reflection.

"He's gone…" She murmured. "He's gone… So why can't I get him out of my head?" She finished in a wail, collapsing against the wall, sobs racking her body. She cried, wept, and lamented for a full hour before she passed out from exhaustion.

As usual.

Every night since Nar- No, since Oliver Davis rejected her, she'd cried herself to sleep, usually in the bathroom. She had a job, and lived normally—until she got home at night. She'd collapse and sob, take a relaxing bath, change, and cry herself to sleep in the bathroom.

It was unhealthy, to say the least.

At most, it slowly grew an ingrained hatred, the strongest kind. Born of both love and rejection, and self-hate, it slowly grew from anger to blame to hatred. Every night, her last thought was, 'Why did he have to do this to me?' and every night she found no answer.

Ayako, bou-san, John-san, and even Masako were worried. She showed up with a pleasant façade, but whenever they saw her walking home from the teashop where she worked (a constant and painful reminder of Nar-Oliver, but it was the only job she could find), she was a haggard, exhausted mess. She hadn't had fun in ages; her life was school and work, and she never laughed anymore unless it was forced. Takigawa had contacted Lin several times, but Oliver wouldn't listen to anything concerning Mai, although Lin reported that he was behaving oddly since he left Japan.

Whenever her 'family' asked her about how tired she was, she would just smile and say, 'oh, it's just been a tiring week, that's all,' and would deny anything else being wrong, as she always had.

But every night, she cried herself to sleep.

Everything reminded her of Olive: the trees, the puddles, the tea, the people around her, everything. It brought her so much pain she wanted to take her own life, but as usual she couldn't bring herself to hurt her little family by taking herself away.

And so she dragged herself through her life, wondering if she would ever get over Oliver. She couldn't even see a therapist; the whole Oliver-Gene-post-cognitive-dreams thing would probably end her up in an institution. She'd tried everything she could, even hypnotizing herself into forgetting him, but nothing worked.

It didn't help that Gene continued to visit her dreams. His spirit had not passed on; he called his brother an 'idiot scientist' for thinking it would be that simple.

_But why does he keep visiting _me_? _Mai wondered. _I'm so screwed up right now… Maybe I'm just crazy. That would make sense. I think…_

She'd tried everything she could do alone, and couldn't bring herself to tell her little 'family'. All she could do was hope for a miracle…

And that was exactly what she got.


End file.
